People are looking to reclaim their agency and autonomy, we over relied on corpos and they used that as opportunity to price gouge us.
I wanted to ask where the border of selfhosting is. Do I need to have the storage and computing at home?
Is a cheap VPS on hetzner where I installed python, PieFed and it’s Postgres database but also nginx and letsencrpt manually by mydelf and pointed my domain to it, selfhosting?
I would say yes, it’s still self-hosting. It’s probably not “home labbing”, but it’s still you responsible for all the services you host yourself, it’s just the hardware which is managed by someone else.
Also don’t let people discourage you from doing bare-metal.
It depends who you ask (which we can already tell hehe), but I’d say YES, because you’re the one running the show – you’re free to grab all of your bits and pieces at any time, and move to a different provider. That flexibility of not being locked into one specific cloud service (which can suddenly take a bad turn) is what’s precious to me.
And on a related note, I also make sure that this applies to my software-stack too – I’m not running anything that would be annoying to swap out if it turns bad.
Is a cheap VPS on hetzner where I installed python, PieFed and it’s Postgres database but also nginx and letsencrpt manually by mydelf and pointed my domain to it, selfhosting?
I don’t get hung up on the definitions and labels. I run a hybrid of 3 vps and one rack in the closet. I’m totally fine with you thinking that is not selfhosting or homelabbing. LOL I have a ton of fun doing it, and that’s the main reason why I do it; to learn and have fun. It’s like producing music, or creating bonsai, or any of the other many hobbies I have.
I would say there’s no value in assigning such a tight definition on self-hosting–in saying that you must use your own hardware and have it on premise.
I would define selfhost as setting up software/hardware to work for you, when turn-key solutions exist because of one reason or another.
Netflix exists. But we selfhost Jellyfin. Doesn’t matter if its not on our hardware or not. What matters is that we’re not using Netflix.
Your stuff is still in the cloud, so I would say no. It’s better than using the big tech products, but I wouldn’t say it’s fully “self hosted”. Not that that really makes much of a difference. You’re still pretty much in control of everything, so you should be fine.
Where is the tipping point though? If I have a server at my parents house, they live in Germany and I in Korea, does my dad host it then because he is paying for the electricity and the access to the internet and makes sure those things work?
Your parents’ house isn’t the cloud, so yeah, it’s self hosted. The “tipping point” is whether you’re using a hosting provider.
They are using a hosting provider - their dad.
“The cloud” is also just a bunch of machines in a basement. Lots of machines in lots of “basements”, but still.
“hosting provider” in this instance I think means “do you pay them (whoever has the hardware in their possession) a monthly/quarterly/yearly fee”
otherwise you can also say “well ACTUALLY your isp is providing the ability to host on the wan so they are the real hosting provider” and such…
Isn’t my dad the hosting provider? I ordered the hardware, he connected it to his switch and his electricity and pressed the button to start it the first time. From there on I logged in to his VPN and set up the server like I would at Hetzner.
But you’re right it doesn’t really make a difference. I feel the only difference it makes for me where I post my questions on Lemmy if it is in a !selfhosting community or a !linux community.
From a feeling perspective, even if I use Hetzners cloud, I feel I self host my single user PieFed instance (and matrix, my other websites, mastodon, etc.) because I have to preform basically the same steps as for things I’m really hosting at home like open-webui, immich, peertube.
It’s self hosting as long as you are in control of the data you’re hosting.
I’d say you need storage. Once you get storage, use cases start popping up into view over time.
Personally, I’d say no. At that point you are administering it, not hosting it yourself.
Why wouldn’t you just use Docker or Podman
Manually installing stuff is actually harder in a lot of cases
Yeah why wouldn’t you want to know how things work!
I obviously don’t know you, but to me it seems that a majority of Docker users know how to spin up a container, but have zero knowledge of how to fix issues within their containers, or to create their own for their custom needs.
That’s half the point of the container… You let an expert set it up so you don’t have to know it on that level. You can manage fast more containers this way.
OK, but I’d rather be the expert.
And I have no troubling spinning up new services, fast. Currently sitting at around ~30 Internet-facing services, 0 docker containers, and reproducing those installs from scratch + restoring backups would be a single command plus waiting 5 minutes.
reproducing those installs from scratch + restoring backups would be a single command plus waiting 5 minutes.
Is that with Ansible or your own tooling or something else?
I’d rather be the expert
Fair, but others, unless they are getting paid for it, just want their shit to work. Same as people who take their cars to a mechanic instead of wrenching on it themselves, or calling a handyman when stuff breaks at home. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I literally get paid to do this type of work and there is no way for me to be an expert in all the services that our platform runs. Again, that’s kind of the point. Let the person who writes the container be the expert. I’ll provide the platform, the maintenance, upgrades, etc… the developer can provide the expertise in their app.
A lot of times it is necessary to build the container oneself, e.g., to fix a bug, satisfy a security requirement, or because the container as-built just isn’t compatible with the environment. So in that case would you contract an expert to rebuild it, host it on a VM, look for a different solution, or something else?
30, that’s cute. I currently have 70 containers running on my home server. That doesn’t include any lab I run or the stuff I use at work. Containers make life much easier. I also guarantee you don’t know those apps as well as you think you do either. Just being able to install and configure something doesn’t mean you know the inner workings of them. I used to do the same thing you do. Eventually, I would rather spend my time doing other things or learning certain things more in-depth and be okay with a working knowledge of others. It can be fun and rewarding to do things the hard way but don’t kid yourself and think you’re somehow superior for doing it that way.
Containers != services.
I don’t think I am better than anyone. I jumped into these comments because docker was pushed as superior, unprompted.
Installing and configuring does not an expert make, agreed; but that’s not what I said.
I would say I’m pretty knowledgeable about the things I host though, seeing as I am a contributor and / or package maintainer for a number of them…
Correct, not all containers are for services. I would never say that docker is superior. I would however say that containers are (I can be pedantic too). They’re version-controlled, they come with the correct dependencies, etc… There are many reasons why developing with containers is superior and I’m sure you’re aware of them already. Everyone is moving to do exactly that. There are always edge cases, but those are few and far between these days.
I use apps on my phone, but have no clue how to troubleshoot them. I have programs on my computer that I hardly know how to use, let alone know the inner workings of. How is running things in Docker any different? Why put down people who have an interest in running things themselves?
I know you’re just trying to answer the above question of “why do it the hard way”, but it struck me as a little condescending. Sorry if I’m reading too much into it!
No, I actually think that is a good analogy. If you just want to have something up and running and use it, that’s obviously totally fine and valid, and a good use-case of Docker.
What I take issue with is the attitude which the person I replied to exhibits, the “why would anyone not use docker”.
I find that to be a very weird reaction to people doing bare metal. But also I am biased. ~30 Internet facing services, 0 docker in use 😄
This is interesting to me. I run all of my services, custom and otherwise, in docker. For my day job, I am the sole maintainer of all of our docker environment and I build and deploy internal applications to custom docker containers and maintain all of the network routing and server architecture. After years of hosting on bare metal, I don’t know if I could go back to the occasional dependency hell that is hosting a ton of apps at the same time. It is just too nice not having to think about what version of X software I am on and to make sure there isn’t incompatibility. Just managing a CI/CD workflow on bare metal makes me shudder.
Not to say that either way is wrong, if it works it works imo. But, it is just a viewpoint that counters my own biases.
You can customize or build custom containers with a Dockerfile
Also, I want to know how containers work. That’s way more useful.
I did that first but that always required much more resources than doing it yourself because every docker starts it’s own database and it’s own nginx/apache server in addition to the software itself.
Now I have just one Postgresql database instance running with many users and databases on it. Also just one Nginx which does all the virtual host stuff in one central place. And both the things which I install with apt and manually are set up similarly.
I use one docker setup for firefox-sync but only because doing it manually is not documented and even the docker way I had to research for quite some time.
What? No it doesn’t… You could still have just one postgresql database if you wanted just one. It is a big antithetical to microservices, but there is no reason you can do it.
But then you can’t just use the containers provided by the service developers and have to figure out how to redo their container which in the end is more work than just run it manually.
Some examples:
- Lemmy: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible/blob/main/templates/docker-compose.yml#L81
- Firefox Sync: https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs/blob/master/docker-compose.mysql.yaml#L13
- TinyTinyRSS: https://gitlab.tt-rss.org/tt-rss/tt-rss/-/blob/master/docker-compose.yml?ref_type=heads#L10
- Mastodon: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/main/docker-compose.yml#L5
- PeerTube: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/docker/production/docker-compose.yml#L71
and many more.
Well, yes that’s best practice. That doesn’t mean you have to do it that way.
You absolutely can. It’s not like the developers of postgresql maintain a version of postgresql that only allows one db. You can connect to that db and add however many things you want to it.
Escaping vendor lock-in. It’s why people hate the cloud when it used to be the answer for everything. You make a good product that can only be used with your hardware/software, whatever, and people run from that shit because it’s abused more often than not.
Apple is the biggest example of this. Synology is getting worse and worse. Plex not far behind either.
I’d say plex is up there. “Want to use your hardware and bandwidth to view your own files? Pay us!”
I recently discovered that Plex no longer works over local network, if you lose internet service. A) you can’t login without internet access. B) even if you’re already logged in, apps do not find and recognize your local server without internet access. So, yeah, Plex is already there.
What!?! Damn. I didn’t know it got that enshitty already.
Truly awesome that this hobby is getting coverage! I’m very very lazy when it comes to self-hosting, by far my largest project was moving off Spotify and archiving all my playlists.
Rotating 3 API keys for spotdl and a YTP free trial for that sweet sweet 256kbps AAC then Musicbrainz Picard to label correctly all the music (automatic was nearly almost always wrong), then automating rebuilding the m3u8 playlists followed by the insane work of correcting all the little imperfections. Must’ve taken me like 2-3 weeks of just working on it most of the day.
But the result? A proper offline music library with all my main playlists with each song at the proper position and order in my playlists with the correct (Spotify) metadata using correct versions of the songs in at least 256kbps AAC (and many cases FLAC and where available non-vinyl hi-res).
Tossed on an old dell workstation I got for £50. Hosting navidrome where my JF, Qbittorrent-nox and Immich live. Using symfonium on my phone. Can access remotely via OpenVPN. Couldn’t be happier.
Dude Navidrome is so great. I hooked my my decades worth of music collection up to it and now I can stream b-side tracks and indie bands that weren’t on Spotify. Plus when I hit random I know it’s actually random and not some algo to sell the newest slop that Spotify is pushing.
I didn’t think I’d get as much of a kick out of knowing that my random shuffle is truly random, but I do.
Self hosting music that I purchased is a really liberating feeling
I grew out of just about everything in my old digital library so it’s been long gone, but I didn’t realize just how much stuff I had on my old bandcamp account already. Grabbed all of that, bought a bunch more, obtained everything else from my Tidal rotations and slapped it all into Navidrome.
The initial setup is definitely a pain but the payoff has been tremendous. Not financially though - I spent more buying new shit from small artists than I would spend on a streaming service in a year. But that goes so much further for them than streaming does anyway.
I’m curious if this community would do a community survey.
If it didn’t ask me irrelevant personal information
What’s you favorite color?
Not relevant
Ethen Sholly has done surveys before on his website selfh.st
edit: I’m an idiot
Don’t be hard on yourself.
I refuse to answer that or any other question.
What’s your favorite color?
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
— Richard P. Feynman
I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it’s nice to have computers seem “fun” again.
At least, that’s my perspective.
It’s a little bit of everything.
I haven’t really dabbled with tech much outside of work since college. This year, I started on a huge journey to change that for a couple of reasons:
- The ongoing technofascist shitshow was the biggest motivator. I want to move as far away from big tech as possible. I’m sick of passively supporting companies that supply and fund genocides, steal and cheat their way to billions, and shove AI bullshit into everything.
- Regaining control and privacy. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. Complacency is part of how we got here.
- On a personal note, I quit Twitch streaming last year after a decade, and frankly just needed a new hobby.
- The Steam Deck showed me that gaming on Linux day-to-day is extremely viable after all these years. Last time I tried a Linux desktop, it was practically non-existent outside of Valve porting the Orange Box.
- It just makes for some interesting projects
I’ve done all of this in the past 5 months:
- Got a new desktop (I just needed the upgrade in general), tweaked the hell out of Windows on it, but wanted more
- Scrapped that plan and set up a CachyOS dual boot. I’ve touched Windows maybe 5 times since then. I keep it around just in case but I never use it.
- Wiped my bloated phone and installed GrapheneOS
- Started making some moves on the software side: finally bought a good VPN, moved off GMail to Tuta, started using LibreWolf and Fennec, etc etc.
- In that process, I got a cheap VPS and set up NextCloud as a Drive replacement. No idea what I was doing, security nightmare I’m sure, and I ended up scrapping that and going the full selfhost route
- Now I’m selfhosting 40ish services on a mini PC that not only replace big tech products I used to use, but also add so much more utility
Learn Podman since Docker has some licensing restrictions in some cases.
deleted by creator
It is less user friendly but theoretically more powerful and secure
The learning curve can be steep but if you have ever worked with config files it isn’t bad.
